Saving Seafood

Submissions open for WSI’s second “Women in Seafood” video contest

March 22, 2019 — Women at work in the seafood industry is the focus of an international video competition that’s now open for entries. The scope includes all segments of the industry – fishing on boats, fish farming, processing, selling, managing, research, monitoring, teaching, and any related services.

It’s the second round for the contest that was launched last year by the Paris-based group Women in the Seafood Industry.

“Women are very numerous in the industry, but not very visible,” said Marie Christine Monfort, WSI president, and co-founder.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

The global chain that produces your fish

January 16, 2017 — PARIS — That smoked salmon you bought for the New Year’s festivities has a story to tell.

The salmon may have been raised in Scotland — but it probably began life as roe in Norway.

Harvested at a coastal farm, the fish may have been sent to Poland to be smoked.

It may even have travelled halfway around the world to China to be sliced.

It eventually arrived, wrapped in that tempting package, in your supermarket.

Globalisation has changed the world in many ways, but fish farming is one of the starkest examples of its benefits and hidden costs.

The nexus of the world fish-farming trade is China — the biggest exporter of fish products, the biggest producer of farmed fish and a major importer as well.

With battalions of lost-cost workers, linked to markets by a network of ocean-going refrigerated ships, China is the go-to place for labour-intensive fish processing.

In just a few clicks on Alibaba, the Chinese online trading hub, you can buy three tonnes of Norwegian filleted mackerel shipped from the port city of Qingdao for delivery within 45 days.

“There is a significant amount of bulk frozen fish sent to China just for filleting,” said a source from an association of importers in an EU country.

“The temperature of the fish is brought up to enable the filleting but the fish are not completely defrosted.”

The practice has helped transform the Chinese coastal provinces of Liaoning and Shandong into global centres for fish processing.

Read the full story at Yahoo

French retailers, companies guided on avoiding illegal fishing

December 5th, 2016 — NGOs Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF), SeaWeb Europe and WWF-France have issued a joint advisory note in collaboration with retailer Carrefour to inform French industry, retailers and brands of the risks associated with illegal fishing.

Following the positive acceptance of a similar guide issued to the U.K. supply chain last year, the French adaptation offers expert advice on source risk assessment and mitigation, and encourages action to prevent illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishery products entering French supply chains.

Presented in Paris, France, the new advisory sets out key recommendations, including:

  • Strengthened transparency and traceability of supply chains
  • Support for the effective ratification of the FAO Port State Measures Agreement (PSMA) and ILO Conventions relevant for fisheries
  • The introduction of IMO numbers or alternative unique verification identifiers linked to a global record of fishing vessels
  • Promote harmonization of import verification procedures across all EU member states, including an electronic catch certification system

According to EJF Executive Director, Steve Trent, there is a growing appetite for information on where seafood is coming from.

“Knowing where, and under what conditions, seafood is caught is vital for building legal and sustainable fisheries, and companies have a right to demand suppliers provide information on where products come from,” he said.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Remember the Oceans!

November 25, 2015 — On Nov. 30, more than 140 world leaders, including President Obama, will meet in Paris for the beginning of a historic two-week conference on climate change. There’s already been a flurry of voluntary national pledges, increasing confidence that the meeting will likely result in the first global agreement on emissions reductions. What they won’t be discussing, however (due to diplomatic quirks), is the effect of climate change on the world’s largest and most important ecosystem: the oceans.

That’s a shame. As I wrote this summer in Rolling Stone, there’s increasing evidence that the world’s oceans are nearing the point of no return. They’re getting hit with a double whammy—rising temperatures and acidification—that together are forcing fundamental changes to the basis of the planet’s food chain.

So far, the oceans have absorbed about 93 percent of all the additional heat energy trapped by rising greenhouse gas concentrations. That’s already prompted the loss of about 40 percent of the world’s coral reefs, accelerated by a series of worldwide bleaching events in which exceptionally warm water temperatures prompt normally symbiotic algae to become toxic—the most recent of which was just this year. Since coral reefs—the “rainforests of the sea”—support a quarter of all marine life on just 0.1 percent of the ocean area, a mass extinction may already be underway. If we lose the oceans, we lose everything.

Water temperatures this year in the North Pacific have surged to record highs far beyond any previous measurements. That means krill and anchovies have been forced into a narrow corridor of relatively cooler water close to the shore, and predators like whales are feasting on the dregs of an ecosystem. Along the coast of California, there’ve been sightings of rarely present species such as white pelicans, flying fish, Mexican red crabs, and nearly extinct basking sharks. Last year, a subtropical Humboldt squid was caught in southern Alaska—along with a thresher shark that was also far from its natural range. After a startling number of starving baby California sea lions began washing up on shore a couple of years ago, a colony has taken up residence in the Columbia River in Oregon. Marine life is moving north, adapting in real-time to the warming ocean. But for how much longer?

Read the full story at Slate